There is good news and bad news for fans of the Alberta-shot western Hell on Wheels. AMC announced Friday that the railroad drama will be renewed for an extended fifth season that will stretch into the summer of 2016. But it also confirmed that it will be the last season for the series.

It’s a daunting prospect for any performer to wait for those first reviews. But Medicine Hat native MacKenzie Porter may have been more jittery than most as she waited for the first wave of response to the Season 4 opener of AMC’s epic railroad and nation-building western Hell on Wheels. These days, it tends to come from online commentators and tweeters, fans that can be decidedly rigid and possessive of their favourite shows and characters.

Two-and-a-half years ago, actor Jonathan Scarfe sold everything and abandoned his L.A. life to sail around the world with his wife and children. The Toronto-born actor spent a year and half on the Sea of Cortes, “totally off the grid,” crossed the Pacific and had just gotten to Hawaii when he realized he was “completely and totally out of money.”

It may not be the most wholesome way to measure progress, but the new whorehouse on AMC’s Hell on Wheels speaks volumes about the deceptive facade of civilization presented in the fourth season of the Alberta-shot western. As fans of the series know, the first house of ill-repute that workers building transcontinental railway patronized was a filthy tent in a filthy tent city that travelled alongside the new tracks in the 1860s.

When asked to compare Calgary’s Wild West to the American south, Hell on Wheels star Anson Mount came up with a few colourful similarities. “We both listen to country music ... We both like guns and horses.”

Don't expect too many specific details about plot points. But if you're tired of hanging with Hobbits and aliens, the cast of western Hell on Wheels have been added to The Calgary Comic and Entertainment